To receive any disclosures of interest.

None

To confirm as a correct record the minutes of the Joint Shared Services Committee held on 28 June 2010.

The Minutes of the meetings of the Joint Shared Services Committee held on 28 June 2010 were confirmed as a correct record and were signed by the Chairman.

To announce items of other business notified to the Secretary of the Joint Committee, together with the special circumstances which justify their consideration as a matter of urgency. The Chairman to rule on the admission of such items. (Note: If other confidential business is approved under this item, it will also be necessary to specify the class of exempt or confidential information in the additional item(s)).

The Chairman accepted a late report on agenda item 8 - External Auditor’s Report to those charged with Governance - September 2010 for discussion as urgent business as it was essential to sign off the Auditors’ Statement.

This report provides an update on the performance of the shared services in the current year.

This report provided an update on the performance of the shared services in the current year.  The Director of Corporate Resources and Governance reported that to date there were no significant variations in expenditure against the original budget and that a report on potential budget reductions for 2011/12 would be made to the Joint Committee on 22 November.

Reports from each of the services were made to the Joint Committee, covering progress in the last quarter, key current activities and projects for 2010/11. Members had also received monthly and quarterly Performance Indicator and budgetary control information for each service.

The Heads of Service and Executive Director reported and responded to Members’ questions on the following achievements and activities, among others.

ICT – Avni Patel

Additional ICT resources had been put into the helpdesk function to improve response times and that the forthcoming restructure of ICT would further improve the service to clients and increase user satisfaction.  Purchase of a new profile server with local storage to replace an old server which did not have local storage had resolved lengthy delays in client access at Watford.  Problems encountered had required input by Microsoft engineers.  There were no plans to incur unbudgeted expenditure through the ICT restructure.

Finance - Alan Power

The audits of Watford, Three Rivers and Shared Services had produced no significant issues.  Some problems had been encountered with the implementation of COA finance system.  The Officers were dissatisfied with the performance of the supplier, whose account manager would be attending a meeting on 24 September.  The Councils could expect substantial repayments of VAT following successful claims, amounting to £1.6m for Watford and £0.9m for Three Rivers.  £25,000 had been received to date.  Two areas where work was still needed were payment of invoices within 30 days and switching payments to a number of suppliers from cheques to BACS. Further work was required to eliminate a backlog of bank reconciliations and to achieve the 10-day performance target.

Human Resources – Tricia Taylor on behalf of Terry Baldwin

A common staff appraisal system was in preparation for both Councils, for completion by 10 December and the HR staff to employee ratio was 1:92, close to the private sector ratio of 1:100.  Sickness levels had fallen in Three Rivers to 7.6 days per employee and in Watford to 8.6 days in 2009/10.  Further improvements were expected in quarter 2.  A further explanation of the figures for long and short term sickness for Three Rivers District Council would be circulated to Members by the Head of Service.

Revenues and Benefits – Phil Adlard

The Benefits claims workload had increased in the last 12 months by 8% in Watford and 4% in Three Rivers.  NI180 was no longer a performance indicator, but the information could be included in RB4 if Members so wished.  Council Tax collection had improved under the interim Revenues Manager and further improvements were expected in the second quarter.  Regular reports would be made on Housing Benefit overpayments and the  ...  view the full minutes text for item JSS14/10

This report gives the outcome of the review carried out for revenues and benefits, and details of progress against the resulting action.

The Joint Committee received a report on a proposed Action Plan following a review of the Revenues and Benefits Service.

In response to questions the Head of Revenues and Benefits stated that, in paragraph 7.1.1 the surname split was operating effectively but would eventually be replaced. There was not a geographical split.  Future reports would incorporate target dates for each recommended action.

ACTION AGREED:-

(1)          that the Committee noted the contents of the Action Plan: and

(2)          that the Committee agreed to receive further reports at future meetings to update on progress against the Plan, incorporating implementation dates.

The report sets out the argument for the creation of a new post of Policy, Quality and Training Team Leader with particular emphasis on fulfilling the requirements for a Systems and Subsidy expert role.

The Joint Committee was requested to support the creation of a new post of Policy, Quality and Training Team Leader with particular emphasis on fulfilling the requirement for a Systems & Subsidy expert role.

The Head of Revenues and Benefits advised that the post would provide a resource to monitor benefit subsidy and protect against losses of subsidy arising from inaccurate claims and the consequent withholding of subsidy by the DWP.  The additional costs of the post would be fully met by reductions in subsidy losses from the two Councils’ client accounts.

Members supported the proposal but recognised that the costs would need to be apportioned appropriately between the Councils.

ACTION AGREED:

(1)     that the Joint Committee supported the creation of the post of Policy, Quality and Training Team Leader, subject to resolution (2) below; and

(2)     that the Director of Corporate Resources and Governance and the Executive Director Resources agree on how the £36,000 costs of the post were to be split between the two Councils.

This report allows the Committee to ask questions of the external auditor concerning his ‘Report to those charged with Governance’.

This report enabled the Committee to question the external auditors concerning their report and to agree the Annual Governance statement for inclusion in the Statement of Accounts.  The significant governance issues to be addressed by both Councils over the coming year were detailed in Sections 1.5, 1.12, 2.2, 2.12 and 2.21 of the report.

In response to a question on the costs of the audit, Paul Dossett state that auditors’ fees were set by the Audit Commission.  Fee levels had increased to £11,219 to reflect the requirement for three audits instead of two for the Councils, following the inclusion of an audit of Shared Services.  He considered it unlikely that the impending changes referred to in paragraph 2.21 of the report would impact significantly on audit costs.

The Chairman thanked the External Auditors for their report.

ACTION AGREED

(1)     that the External Auditor Report to those charged with governance – September 2010 be noted, and

(2)     that the letter of representation attached at Appendix 2 of the report be approved.

The Chairman to move:-

“that, under Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following item(s) of business as it is likely, in view of the nature of the business to be transacted or the nature of the proceedings, that if the press or public were present during consideration of the item(s) there would be disclosure to them of exempt information as defined under the respective paragraphs of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Act.”

If approved the Chairman will ask the press and public to leave the meeting at this point.

RESOLVED

“that, under Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business as it is likely, in view of the nature of the business to be transacted or the nature of the proceedings, that if the press or public were present during consideration of the item there would be disclosure to them of exempt information as defined under Paragraph 4 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Act.”

This report updates members on the re-structure to the ICT service.

The Joint Committee received a progress report on the restructure and a plan for completion.

The Head of ICT advised of the proposed detailed structure in comparison to the existing structure.  There would be no change to the existing FTE establishment, although two vacant posts would be deleted and two part-time posts would provide additional early and late cover for first line customer contacts.  It was hoped to avoid redundancies although there would be some changes to job responsibilities.

The Chairman thanked the Head of ICT Services for a substantial report and looked forward to a further report to the next meeting.

ACTION AGREED:-

(1)     that the Joint Committee notes the work underway and the timetable for the completion of the restructure and that a further update be reported back to the Joint Committee in November 2010;

(2)     that public access to the report be denied until the issue has been resolved; and

(3)     that public access to the decision be denied until the Joint Committee Action Sheet or Minutes publication.